Steering Limiter

25 posts in this topic

Right, I can't believe nobody's said anything about this yet. A nice and simple thing: shouldn't rover wheels and landing gear have a steering limiter tweakable? This would greatly help fast rovers not flip out when at high speeds from when you just dab the turning key and all of your TR-2Ls suddenly swivel and explosions and pinwheeling ensue. I can see this causing issues for craft where not all wheels have been tweaked, but this would be a small price to pay for being able to turn at speed without losing control.

Wheels have tweakables for seemingly everything else, so why not complete the set? I don't think this would be too hard to mod in either, if Linux has any plans (99% certainly not) to add it to TweakableEverything.

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Indeed, in KF steering has both high- and low- speed limits capable of being set in the part action window. 'Low' is the overall limiter (in case you just want to reduce max steering), while 'High' is an additional limiter that takes into account vessel speed (simulating a bit of a steering...uhh..linear curve).

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I searched for it in the titles, must have put the wrong criteria in or something. We all know what this section of the forum is like.

Pretty much. Honestly, I'm not sure why they leave it open at this point. I don't think they have seriously used it since at least 0.25. Of course if they closed it, requests would just get dumped elsewhere so I guess it still as a small purpose of keeping other areas clean.

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Really, since 1.2 and the signs of a possible end of development showing up.

I doubt it, since T2 is going to want to do something with their newly purchased dev team, even if it means monetising KSP to the Mun and back. I do see why development would slow at this point, since I can't really think of any new features aside from small tweaks like this, the permanently ongoing bugzapping and integrating mods into vanilla KSP.

Remap your rover controls from WASD to IJKL to use only the steering and not the reaction wheels.

And last but not least be aware of your speed. A 'mere' 25m/s equates to 90km/h (56M/h). Try pulling a hard left in your car at that speed and you'll be doing cartwheels. In a low G environment this will happen at MUCH lower speeds.
The real life Curiosity Mars rover has a top speed of about 30 metres (98 ft) per hour. In KSP you can reach 30 metres per second without too much difficulty. That's 3600 times faster.

Remap your rover controls from WASD to IJKL to use only the steering and not the reaction wheels.

And last but not least be aware of your speed. A 'mere' 25m/s equates to 90km/h (56M/h). Try pulling a hard left in your car at that speed and you'll be doing cartwheels. In a low G environment this will happen at MUCH lower speeds.
The real life Curiosity Mars rover has a top speed of about 30 metres (98 ft) per hour. In KSP you can reach 30 metres per second without too much difficulty. That's 3600 times faster.

1. That's not enough when your choices are on or off. Having extra sensitivity won't make any difference, you still have two settings fully on or fully off. Tapping the key works in flight but it's too jerky when steering on the ground to be reasonable. By this same argument we wouldn't need the Authority Limiter on the ailerons, and yet we have it anyway.

2. I already do this, but usually I don't even have reaction wheels on my rover. That won't help the situation though, it's not what causes the symptom.

3. Again, on or off. There is no option for a "Soft left" unless you have a flight stick or other analog control. You end up doing a hard left whether you want to or not. That's why we need an authority limiter.

Edited August 4 by Alshain

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Right, I can't believe nobody's said anything about this yet. A nice and simple thing: shouldn't rover wheels and landing gear have a steering limiter tweakable? This would greatly help fast rovers not flip out when at high speeds from when you just dab the turning key and all of your TR-2Ls suddenly swivel and explosions and pinwheeling ensue. I can see this causing issues for craft where not all wheels have been tweaked, but this would be a small price to pay for being able to turn at speed without losing control.

So, you're telling me when you drive your car, you are full throttle all the time, and turn the wheel fully in one direction when you steer?

I understand it's a keyboard, so it's a pretty much on/off scenario, an maybe having limiter's is a good idea, but first you gotta ask is it user error?

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IMO It's not hard to walk the keyboard, especially with fine controls on. That being said, given all the options we currently have available in the context menu it would make sense to have a steering limiter in there.

If not a tweakable one limiter, perhaps a fixed system which reduces the slew rate as a function of the proportion of the vehicle's current speed to the wheel's maximum speed? The closer to the max rating the slower the wheel would turn. This would still allow you to flip at high speed if you held the button down, but would greatly increase the ability to perform smooth turns at higher velocity by 'walking' the button.

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As I said, Do you take the turns in your car at full throttle with the wheel full over? Unless you are driving an F1 style car, I think not.

On 8/3/2017 at 5:28 PM, voicey99 said:

rovers not flip out when at high speeds

Oh wait, yes, yes I am saying you drive too fast.

You gotta remember, rovers in KSP go insanely fast, over rough terrain. 10 m/s is not that fast in game, but that's 22 mph (36 kph), and I would not consider that a 'high speed' rover in KSP. 20-30 ms is high speed. But go take your car down a dirt road at 22 mph, then try to turn. And that's a dirt road, which may be loose gravel, is usually graded and smooth. These rover's are going over rough terrain. So slow down and then make your turns.

Lower you CoM on your rover, this will make it less prone to roll overs.

Disable rear wheel steering, this will make it less prone to turning too sharp, and rolling over.

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I think you're missing the point of this request here. It's to let you turn safely at highs speeds by widening the turning circle.

This is BS! With proper rover design you do NOT need ANY limiters. I do it all the time. My rovers rarely flip, even with full steering lock at full speed.
Yes, the wheel physics leave a lot to be desired. They are far from ideal and could should be improved as soon as possible. But designing a stable rover isn't hard. It can be done in just a few minutes. If I can do it so can you. Please do not blame the game for your shortcomings.

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I think you're missing the point of this request here. It's to let you turn safely at highs speeds by widening the turning circle.

Look I understand what the limiter does. It'd be great for landing planes and such, so you don't waggle down the runway as much, so I'm behind the idea. Why not add it?

But I think you are missing the point of physics. You cannot change directions at high speed without repercussions. On a perfectly flat surface, this can be done. On a very bumpy rock strewn hill, it cannot. To do so, requires the design and construction of very specialized high speed off road vehicles, ie Rally cars. These are probably possible in KSP, but the rover's you have designed and driven clearly are not these.

So either design better rovers, or learn to drive better.

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This is BS! With proper rover design you do NOT need ANY limiters. I do it all the time. My rovers rarely flip, even with full steering lock at full speed.
Yes, the wheel physics leave a lot to be desired. They are far from ideal and could should be improved as soon as possible. But designing a stable rover isn't hard. It can be done in just a few minutes. If I can do it so can you. Please do not blame the game for your shortcomings.

1 hour ago, Gargamel said:

Look I understand what the limiter does. It'd be great for landing planes and such, so you don't waggle down the runway as much, so I'm behind the idea. Why not add it?

But I think you are missing the point of physics. You cannot change directions at high speed without repercussions. On a perfectly flat surface, this can be done. On a very bumpy rock strewn hill, it cannot. To do so, requires the design and construction of very specialized high speed off road vehicles, ie Rally cars. These are probably possible in KSP, but the rover's you have designed and driven clearly are not these.

So either design better rovers, or learn to drive better.

How I read that-ermagherd u suck n00b

Looks like I pressed some buttons here. My point is that a limiter would make it easier to turn at high speeds. That is all. No need for rants.

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I'm with Gargamel on this one; KSP is not an easy game by any stretch of imagination, and I like it that way. Few games these days are challenging to the point where you don't have to learn a specific skill set in the context of the game to be effective - KSP provides practical experience with a vast array of pragmatic engineering subjects. Some tasks are definitely outside the scope of the game but very few are impossible - often times you just need to approach it from a different angle.

Decent land vehicle design is pretty tough in KSP because most of the dev effort is focused on simplifying rocket physics, not driving physics. While I do agree that it would be a nice feature, especially given the current configurable state of wheels, I cannot really justify steering limiters (except perhaps in the reduced slew method I mentioned above) in any other regard.